


Butterfly

by darthneko



Series: Handfuls of Dreams [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Human Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-15
Updated: 2009-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1879101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had never, in truth, expected to be chosen. Standing at Year's Birth amongst the other hopefuls, young men in the prime of their strength, young women with grace and beauty, she had never felt herself more plain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly

_Do you believe?_ they asked her.

She drew a breath, the warm air thick with softly curling tendrils of scented smoke that climbed in lazy billows upwards towards the shadowed heights of the ceiling. It had smelled acrid at first, dry with the heat of the braziers, making her cough. Hours later it was only a tickle; the now familiar scent of oddly clean smoke tinged in the fragrance of musk and green herbs. In through the nostrils, circulating through chest and lungs and down to her center, then expelled past her lips on the breath of her answer as they had taught her.

_Yes. I believe._

Fingers touched her cheek. She closed her eyes obediently and the warm, dry pad of a fingertip swept lightly across her eyelids, once, then again. The hand withdrew and when she opened her eyes a tiny shower of golden particles dusted down across her lashes, glinting bright in her vision as she blinked.

_Do you understand?_

The high priest was an older man, his face heavily lined beneath the silver shot cap of his thinning hair, but his eyes had been bright and sharp when he had looked at her that first time. He, of all of them, had spoken to her frankly; not as an instructor to initiate but as one person to another. "This isn't an easy path you have chosen," he had cautioned her gently. "You understand that, don't you?"

It had been summer then, the air rife with the scent of sun warmed grass and the flowers thick with the fragile, iridescent colors of the wings of the Mother's Messengers, and she had thought the question an easy one. "I understand," she had answered, but he had shaken his head at the haste of her reply.

"No," he had said softly. His touch against the back of her hand had been light, the weight of the years curling the joints of his thin boned fingers. He must have once, she remembered thinking, have had beautiful hands. "No, you don't." Not chiding, not patronizing, only stating fact and there had been honest concern in his eyes. "You see only the greatness of the thing, the honor, and the heart of youth that beats in you sees only the grand gesture. But before you do this you must know - truly _know_ \- what it is that you undertake."

The warmth of summer seemed a lifetime earlier, replaced with the dry heat of the ever-lit temple fires. The incense burned the back of her throat as she drew in another breath of it, the taste thick against her tongue as she exhaled. 

_I understand._

Another hand touched her chin, feather light, and she closed her eyes once more as she tilted her face up. A tiny brush smoothed across her lips, cool and wet, infinitely careful, and she held her breath as the gilded paint dried upon her skin. The taste of it, seeping past her lips to brush the tip of her tongue, was metallic and oily.

_Do you wish this?_

"You will die," the high priest had told her softly.

She had never, in truth, expected to be chosen. Standing at Year's Birth amongst the other hopefuls, young men in the prime of their strength, young women with grace and beauty, she had never felt herself more plain. She was nothing to them - an outlying farm girl, the dust of the journey still clinging to her skirt hem and caked like mud around her ankles. She had brought nothing but herself, no gifts for the temple, and though all initiated might be equal in the Mother's eyes she had known herself to be naught in the eyes of the others. Plain brown Sana, silent Sana, with her work roughened hands and the tan of the fields burned into her cheeks.

When her name, out of all of them, had been called, she had known a frisson of fear and elation, her breath caught in her throat as too many emotions tumbled through her. Dream beyond dreams, handed to her unexpectedly, bright and shining as morning dew.

The high priest had shattered those dreams, one by one, in his quiet, kindly voice. He spoke to her as though she were his own daughter, flesh of his flesh, but he spared her nothing and on one cool autumn morning, the air sharp with the first clear chill of winter in a pale blue sky, he had told her, gently but relentlessly, the truths she had only half guessed.

"You will die," he had said, "for what you undertake is nothing of the flesh. You leave behind everything when you step upon this path - family, friends, past, and life itself." 

"I know," she had whispered. Her voice within her throat had suddenly seemed thin and small. "I am prepared."

"Are you?" His eyes had never seemed to miss anything. "This is a sacrifice, child. Of everything. Life, breath... and death. When your heart ceased to beat no priest will bless you, no flame will touch you, no one will sing you on to the wings of the next life. Your ashes will never rest beside your ancestors'. This is not a single task, to be done and finished. This is forever."

"Until the Mother leads us to the light," she had replied, clinging to the ritual words. Her hands, clenched within the folds of her skirts, had been shaking and the day had suddenly seemed much colder. "Until we fly."

He had only looked at her, his eyes dark. His touch, brushing light upon the long braid of her bound hair, had been gentle. "Of course," he had said softly.

The paint on her lips was bitter, mixing oddly with the phantom taste of the incense; sharp and sour all at once, and she could almost feel it taint the words as she spoke them.

_I wish it._

The touches were quiet, impersonal; the caress of hands, of soft bristled brushes, of cloths and oil. The fire of the torches flickered in her eyes, the smoke hazy and glittering as they turned her, first one way, then another, her very skin transformed to canvas beneath the strokes of their brushes amid the muted, respectful clatter from tiny pots and paint and flasks of oil.

_Do you give yourself to the Mother?_

Sunset, on the first day of winter, was a thing of pale gold and paler blue that glimmered through the gathering weight of soft gray clouds. The cold of the temple, nestled at the foot of the mountains, was sharper than that of her home. It bit at her cheeks and fingers and she had watched as her breath plumed in white billows from her lips.

Prayers, studies, eating, sleeping; it was an endless cycle that consumed her every day more than even farm work once had. There was no sense of the passing of time within the temple, one day blending into the next, but standing upon the steps, watching the mist of her breath, she had felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

"I won't see another spring," she had said. It wasn't a question but he answered nonetheless.

"No."

Her fingers had been cold and no amount of tucking them beneath her elbows, held tight to her ribs, seemed to warm them. She had fancied, then, that with each indrawn breath she could feel the chill of the air sink into the tissue of her lungs, creeping into her very veins. "When?"

But he hadn't answered. His silence had been answer enough.

At length he had straightened, lifting his walking staff. The chill was unkind to joints worn with age and as the autumn had progressed he had leaned more and more heavily on the carven wood. Raising it, he had gestured to the distant horizon and the last fading colors of sunset beyond the trees. "Look at it, child," he had told her. "Not with your eyes, but with your heart. Look at it and remember. The colors, the feel, the taste... every moment, every instant. Carve them upon your soul for when you go, those memories alone will you take with you."

She had looked, then; truly looked, as the cold shivered through her, and she had not been sure if the tears that blurred her eyes were due to the beauty of that setting sun or the cold, tight clench of her painfully beating heart. _I am afraid,_ she had wanted to say, but the words had never left her lips, stillborn in her throat. He had stood beside her, a silent, solid presence at her elbow, comforting in his own way. Through the final light of the sunset and the first glimpse of the stars overhead, until the clouds had obscured the sky above. Only when the first small, silent crystals of snow had begun to fall, drifting down out of the darkness, had she dared to move once more.

"Yes." It was all she had dared to say, the whole of it too near and fragile in her throat, but he had nodded as though he understood all that she couldn't speak.

Brushes touched her face, skimmed her cheeks and forehead, dusted lovingly across her lips. The glow of the braziers heated the air, warm and dry, but it could not touch the core of ice that had grown, night and day, within her stomach.

When they drew away she opened her eyes once more, remembering not to touch the tip of her tongue to dry lips for fear of smudging the paint. Her voice, in the solemn quiet, seemed not quite her own. 

_I do._

The high priest's hands reached down to her. In the firelight the twin sigils of the Mother and the temple gleamed duly on his crooked fingers, iridescent gem and bright silver. She raised her own hands to meet him, her arms leaden, and he drew her to her feet.

When she had first entered the chamber she had been stumbling and self conscious, her hands shifting in vain to cover more bared flesh than she had ever shown another. Their eyes on her - _his_ eyes - had flushed her from scarlet to white and back again in waves of hot embarrassment. The passing hours, spent kneeling still and pliant beneath the working hands of the priests, had scoured away her perception of her own body; she felt empty, light, as though the flicker of the flames shifted through her bones and flesh.

He stepped back and the priests came forward once more. Gentle touches raised her arms; fabric, soft and warm as the purest bath water, was draped around her hips in a cascade of rich green and sparkling gold. More hands touched her, gathering her oiled hair, brushing it and separating it. She could feel the cool slither of strands of metal links and strung pearls down her bare back as they plaited them into a thicker, more complicated braid than she normally wore. 

Other hands took her own. The dirt of the farm had been long since scrubbed away, callouses sanded smooth and clean, and she watched from the corner of her eye as they rubbed pigment into them, the Mother's verdigris green staining her fingertips and palms.

They bathed and stained her feet, more hands offering her support as each was lifted. Other hands dusted pigment powder across her breasts and stomach and down her arms and back, trailing after with flicked spatters and rivulets of oil that ran and streaked the colors into swirls as it trailed down her skin. Sana closed her eyes and breathed the warm air deep. There were no more questions, nothing more to answer or prove; the moment was now and she was there, she had passed all of the tests, she was chosen and worthy, and that was all that mattered.

The soft hum of the evening prayers began as they slipped more beaten gold than she had ever seen in her life over her wrists. The thin bangles were loose and made a musical chime as they clinked together. At any other time Sana would have lifted her wrists just to listen to them and marvel at their gleam but the thought seemed distant and pale and the idea of commanding her own muscles beneath skin that felt hollow inside was a strange and impossible thing.

Hands on her shoulders turned her, her feet trailing woodenly after, and like a puppet they guided her from the room, out of the cocoon of warmth and scents and into the cooler corridors. Up, her steps slow and steady, from the depths of the temple up into its heart, where the echoes of prayer sang endlessly, carried through the stones day and night, whispered on the voices of priests and pilgrims alike. It vibrated and hummed all around her, as elusive as the scent of incense on the air. This was the domain of the priests, not mere initiates like herself, and the whispering heartbeat of the temple was their song alone. And now... now it would be Sana's. She would be the Mother's Messenger all through the long, cold, barren months of the winter, until spring came again to breath life into the land and her true messengers burst from their spun shells to dry bright, colorful paper-thin wings in the warm sun.

They took her down a set of shallow steps in the center of the room, where a recess was carved, and when she sank down on the floor and looked up, it was dizzying. The last light of sunset was streaming through the highest windows of the tower where the sacred bells rang morning and night, dying the insides gold and crimson, and she lay beneath it, looking up through the heart of the temple, up and up, to the very sky. 

They left her there, fading away on silent bare feet, until only the high priest knelt beside her. He cupped her cheek lightly, bending to brush the breath of a kiss across her forehead in benediction. "Be brave, my child," he told her. "In you we are all blessed."

She dared to reach up, touching papery skin, her fingertips leaving a green smudge across his cheek. "I will carry your prayers to the Mother," she promised. He nodded, his eyes old and dimmed, and climbed slowly to his feet, leaning heavy on his staff.

"Are you ready?" he asked her, and she had thought the time for questions and affirmations passed but this, this last one, this was the hardest of all. She swallowed, hollow and cold and empty inside, and looked up at the last light of the sun.

"I am."

He was old and frail, but he had been head of the temple for many years and he struck fast and true, so much that she felt the shock of the heavy impact first before the belated echo of the pain. The sharpened end of his staff pierced deep, from navel to back, pinning her to the floor in a bloom of bright agony that stole her breath and squeeze the beat from her heart. She couldn't even scream around it, couldn't move, caught and held and helpless. _You will die_ , he had told her, but he hadn't told her how and oh, the pain was worse than the dying, worse than anything she had imagined late in the depths of the night. There was a wet, gurgling rushing in her ears, of her last breath, of her heartbeat, of the rush of her own blood and she was supposed to _fly_ , she was supposed to be the Mother's Messenger but she was pinned, immobile and crushed to the heavy ground while above her, high above, the ruddy colors of the last sunset blurred and faded...

The high priest gathered the skirts of his robe around him as the sluices opened, ice cold water from the depths of the river pouring into the carved recess. One of the under priests reached to steady him as he backed up the steps; his hands, stained with the remnant of paint and oil, left multi-hued smudges on the high priest's wrist. Below them the recess was filling fast and the Messenger had already ceased struggling, the water washing over painted skin and setting afloat hair and drapery and limb alike. They waited, shoulder to shoulder, and before the sluices closed, the streams trailing away to leave only the quiet lap of water at the lip of the recessed pool, the last bubbled breath of the Messenger had stilled. 

The priest beside him sighed, softly, into the quiet whisper of prayer left behind. "She's beautiful," he said reverently. "It will be a good year." The others nodded their agreement, some spreading their hands in benediction, and one by one, after looking their fill, in silence or in prayer, they took their leave.

The high priest stayed longest, after the others had left, watching the image of their Messenger, their butterfly, drift gently in the almost still pool of water. Preserved in the icy water, she would last until spring, a vision of jeweled green and blue and shining gold fluttering gently in mimicry of fragile wings, pinned beneath the surface of the pool. 

He watched, silent, and if his lips moved in prayer then it was a private thing whispered from a man to the Messenger and no one had ever asked him which prayer song he sang.


End file.
